Has obesity, and Disney, hit rock bottom with Lead Bottom? Lead Bottom is a gold blob, with a bloated gargantuan gut huger than a sumo wrestler on a burger binge, and with a face as unattractive as all get out. If you ask Disney ? Lead Bottom and his villainous counterparts in fat crime including, the sultry Sweet Tooth, Snacker, a plump maiden who looks like a wise cracker, Control Freak ? a menacing dark black robotic monster ? Ice Cappuccino ? a cool looking dude, and the slovenly, Insecura, are all bad-habit characters who must be crushed by heroes like Callie Stenics and Will Power.
Disney has joined the war against obesity and these characters, in this anti-obesity exhibit, with messages zestier than any dry-as-toast please and pleas from the health and nutrition crowd has, if not the potential to wake up wide ?kids to their plights, the demonstrative present ability to put a burr under the saddle of anti-obesity orators and render them aghast. ?They are not amused.
In fact, they?re confused and incensed, pissed that Disney would use such graphic displays to, in their opinion, shame and blame ? and essentially name ? obese youngsters as folks worthy of derision.
But is this so? The angst from over-protective worry-wart adults is that shame will cause tykes, with tender psyches and still developing emotional maturity coping strategies, to retract and withdraw, and, who knows, maybe balloon up even more ? newly rankled, with misery and chagrin.
Or shaming could very well work, and jolt the obese into taking matters into their own hands and take those steps necessary to change habits, and do whatever else is needed to fly right and get slight.
Take The Glutton. Thoroughly gross, in a way too tight pinstripe suit, this tub of lard, with a mug only a venal fat-cat banker would love, might be the catalyst for someone to say: if I keep this up ? I?m going to be that portly pig someday.
One could argue the images are not so much to shame, but to scare. And getting scared straight, or slim, could help in arresting the near-criminal rise in obesity amongst kids and parents.
Disney has an audience bigger than a professor of picky-picayune food management from Bloviate University, and if Disney didn?t, pun intended, use larger-than-life personas to get their message out, Disney?wouldn?t?be Disney. They?d be just another boring, run of the mill ho-hum, dum de dum, public service announcement that would get zapped faster than a pop tart in a microwave cranked? to high.
The creatures above, and others like Drama Queen, who gossips way too much for Disney?s Habit Heroes, are supposed to be shot down by the kids. Killing off bad guys, bad apples, sounds like a lot of fun ? and kids can separate reality from fantasy to know not to get Dad?s 12-gauge when they see a chubby friend coming up the walk.
But Disney apparently has gotten out of the kitchen, for it can?t stand the heat, in the wake of some withering criticism from the likes of the Binge Eating Disorder Association, the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, and Dr. Yoni Freedhoff. He?s an assistant professor of family medicine.
Didn?t somebody say that any publicity is good publicity? Why should Disney cower in the wake of censure from an assistant professor? Has Disney no backbone, no balls? Disney has closed the exhibit ?for the time being.? It opened February 3rd. It closed faster than a bigot?s mind.
One wonders if Disney?s Habit Heroes, who occupy the virtual world of the Disney website and are on the smart phone as a Habit Heroes mobile, will meet a similar, ignoble, premature death.
Catch your breath. Freedhoff thinks the Disney Habit Heroes stereotype obesity. Stereotyping and stigmatization are 2 of the more unpleasant actions we humans sling, but they won?t kill someone as quickly as obesity will ? as many medical practitioners would have us believe.
Look, whatever society has tried up to now, in the west and in third world,?hasn?t?worked a tinker?s damn in stemming or slowing the rise of fatties amongst us. Time to shake up the apple cart and try some new, albeit lurid, tactics to make the most impressionable?among?us ? take a good, hard, look at themselves.
Has the past few years of nanny parenting and endless praising of our progeny worked? Has showering kids with computers and TV?s in their rooms helped? Kids feel more entitled than ever before ? and one of their first entitlements is to apparently forego self-examination.
Freedhoff, in one sense, may be onto something when he says (paraphrasing here) the last thing a tot wants to see while whirling, touring, and twirling at Epcot, the theme park, is a meme reminder of their horrible body situation.
So maybe Disney?s Habit Heroes are a big zero in the fight against obesity. But surely such a shock value display might have turned some kids? lives around?
A child, or an adult, should not mosey through life with rose-colored glasses on, searching for nirvana, a bliss with all in perfect place, and nothing negative, nor amiss. Life is full of ugly truths.? An honest reality check about a particular plight, is the height of responsibility and leaves a person capable of waging the good fight against, in this case, fat. Yes depression about a situation, in extreme cases, can lead to suicide and yes having one?s self image punctured by cartoonish-oafish-boorish miscreants as these Disney has dreamed up, is a bummer ? but self-awareness ? even if vividly reflected ? might be a necessary basic step to identifying a problem, then setting out to do something about it.
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Source: http://he123.solobis.net/disneys-habit-heroes-a-big-anti-obesity-zero
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